Mariko Fujimoto Rooks
Mariko Fujimoto Rooks is a rising senior at Yale, where she double-majors in the History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health and Ethnicity, Race and Migration and is additionally enrolled in the combined BA/MPH program at the Yale School of Public Health. At Yale, she writes for JookSongs, Yale's Asian American spoken word group, and is a two-time All-American nominated water polo player. Mariko is also a member of the national USA Water Polo Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, and will serve as the next JACL Eastern District Council Youth Representative. She is also the Arts and Intersectionality Lead for Changing Womxn Collective, a literary journal and arts platform designed for and by womxn and non-binary BIPOC women and femmes. Raised in Culver City, California, Mariko is also a longtime member of Japanese American community institutions such as Kizuna, Senshin Buddhist Temple, and LABCC's Camp Morningstar.
Updated August 2020
Stories from This Author
Wonder
Dec. 17, 2020 • Curtiss Takada Rooks , Mariko Fujimoto Rooks , traci kato-kiriyama
To close out 2020 and recognize it as a time of challenge, reckoning and coming together, we are excited to end on a strong and beautiful note with this month's feature. We are happy to host the return to Nikkei Uncovered by Mariko Fujimoto Rooks and, this time, feature Mariko alongside her father, Dr. Curtiss Takada Rooks (while it's his first time in this poetry column, he is certainly no stranger to Discover Nikkei). You'll want to check out essays …
What is it to be a Black Japanese American? What should I tell you? What should you know?
Sept. 3, 2020 • Mariko Fujimoto Rooks
Every story has a point, a narrative, and a conclusion, but when I sat down to write this I couldn’t come up with any of those things. In part, I think it’s an occupational hazard of being mixed. Everyone’s understanding of self changes over time, but being mixed is often the lens through which I see this change and complexity in my own life. Blackness gives me access to a community, a history, and a world that is beautiful, joyful, …
Open
Jan. 18, 2018 • Mariko Fujimoto Rooks , Pogo Saito , traci kato-kiriyama
Happy 2018, folks! Upon entering a new year, we put forth the theme of “open” to writers Mariko Rooks, a Culver City native who is currently studying at Yale, and Pogo Saito, now based in Nyssa, Oregon. Their pieces here explore critical openings between self and the things we want to let go of or draw nearer - there is challenge and reflection felt throughout...enjoy. —traci kato-kiriyama * * * * * Mariko Fujimoto Rooks is a mixed race Japanese …
